


From love's weak childish bow live unharm'd

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Backstory, Canon Era, Cousins, Crossdressing, Family, Female Friendship, Gen, Podfic Available, Pre-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosaline has always had too much water in her nature, and her cousin Juliet too much air.</p><p>Set perhaps a year before the play begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From love's weak childish bow live unharm'd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, LittleRaven! I was really intrigued by your letter and I hope you like this.
> 
> Many thanks to bunn, Thursday_Next, and smokefall for kicking around the ideas that led to this, and to MadameHardy for a quality last-minute beta.

“And no doubt the Prince will invite the Giusti family—” 

Rosaline broke off, hardly hearing her cousin Juliet’s next question. There was a letter on her pillow again, written in a careful hand on thick smooth paper, tied with ribbon of Montague green—for Romeo was brave as well as a fool. He fancied himself a noble lover, untouched by the bitterness between their families, and scarcely noticed that Rosaline Capulet had no wish to be a player in his mummery.

Well, the maid was new, and did not yet know that while Rosaline did not mind her maids fleecing Montagues of their coin, she had no wish to see the letters of said Montagues. This one would light a fire as well as the others.

“You’re not going to burn it!” Juliet cried, snatching the letter from her hand before she could throw it in the fire. “Surely it is a letter from a gentleman; I did not know you had a lover, sweet coz. Why would you keep such a secret from me?”

“Because,” Rosaline said as Juliet danced out of her reach, nimble fingers already breaking the seal, “I have no lover, merely a pestilent bee who thinks he spies honey where there is merely vinegar.”

“ _Thy matchless swan-like brow my dream invades,_ ” Juliet read, flinging herself onto her back against Rosaline’s coverlets. “A lover _and_ a poet.”

“A poor one,” said Rosaline. “His rhyme limps.”

“It is not the quality of the rhyme that matters but the sincerity of it. Have you no poetry in your soul yourself? Do you never dream of love?” Juliet asked, rolling her eyes and clasping the letter against the slight swell of her barely-budded bosom. “There is too much water in your nature, cousin; it makes you dull.”

That stung a little, but Rosaline was a Capulet, raised among Capulets, and she had long since learned not to show when a thorn pricked her. “And there is too much air in yours; it makes you flighty. One day you will find yourself floating away on the breeze, to land in God knows what barbarian land.” She slipped an arm around Juliet’s waist to pull her down, and then tickled her until she shrieked with laughter. “And what would I do without my airy cousin to keep me from sinking into leaden dullness?”

But Juliet would not be so easily turned from her course; for all her dreamy wildness she was stubborn, as bad as Tybalt for clutching at an idea until all around her cried mercy.

“You truly do not want him, your mysterious suitor?” Juliet said, when she had regained her breath. “I should like a mysterious suitor; not yet, perhaps, but in a year or two, when I am a woman—”

“His love only persists because I am cold to him, and therefore it is no love at all. Besides, I wish for no lover.” She bent and plucked the letter from Juliet’s hand and consigned it to the fire, where it swiftly reduced to glowing ash, the ribbon curling and twisting like a snake as the wax of the seal melted away. 

Juliet huffed a little, blowing strands of hair out of her face. “Still you speak of the nunnery.”

“Still.”

“I do not understand why you would wish to shut yourself away from the world; from love.”

“There are other kinds of love than the _amores_ of your poets,” said Rosaline, taking Juliet’s hands and pulling her to her feet. “And other worlds than this one, where men fight in the streets like dogs, and women are traded away like coin to those who may become enemies tomorrow. But come, the hour is late, and you ought to be in bed, little goose; you are not yet a woman, to be up half the night, even if it is a feast-day.”

* * *

When Juliet was six, she had climbed the old apple tree at the bottom of the garden one summer afternoon, while her parents were sitting in the library under the Prince’s watchful eye, pretending they wished to make peace with the Montagues.

Juliet as a child had been a kitten: skilled at climbing up, but not so skilled at the return journey. She started to cry, clinging to the gnarled trunk, and the branch she crouched upon had begun to creak alarmingly.

Tybalt and the other boys had vanished down to the river to fish, or rather, to strut like gamecocks not yet in full plumage, puffing out skinny chests and tripping over their swords when they attempted to swagger. That was the summer they had become insufferable, and Rosaline had thought it best to avoid them entirely—but Tybalt adored little Juliet, and would have helped her without telling her father, had he been there.

“Rosaline,” Juliet called down, her voice thin and trembling, “I can’t.”

“You can,” Rosaline said, close to tears herself, “you can, sweetling, just—that branch there will hold you, if you but reach for it.” _You must._ She could not climb after Juliet—even if she knew how, Juliet was far too heavy for her to carry. They would both fall.

But Juliet’s hands remained white-knuckled where she clung, frozen with fear. “Rosaline,” she sobbed again.

It was Camilla Montague who saved them. She had been sent down from the house to fetch them in for dinner—a task better suited to a servant, but no doubt she had no more desire to be cooped up in the stuffy dimness, air crackling with hatred, than the children did.

Camilla had hitched up her woman’s skirts, climbing the tree with the nimbleness of a girl who had once, perhaps, been like Juliet, reckless and fiery. But she had also climbed down with equal ease, Juliet clinging to her back.

“If you are going to climb trees, little Capulet,” Camilla had said to Juliet, who now clung to Rosaline’s hand as if she would never let go, “be sure you know how to get down as well as up.”

* * *

“It will be an adventure,” Juliet said, thrusting a bundle of cloth into Rosaline’s arms. “Come, do you not want to have just one adventure in your life, before you set aside the world forever? Just think, had I been born a man, no one could ever tell me I must stay indoors, wings clipped, while others _lived_.”

The cloth turned out to be one of Tybalt’s old doublets and a nearly worn-out pair of hose, a shirt, and a bonnet to hide her hair. Oh, Juliet.

Yet somehow Rosaline found herself winding bandages filched from the sickroom around Juliet’s tender breasts, binding them so her doublet would lie flat, and permitting Juliet to do the same for her. Juliet made a charming boy, wide-eyed and soft-faced under her cap. Rosaline only felt exposed, as good as naked with her hair tucked up off the nape of her neck and her legs displayed in hose alone, without the concealing rustle of skirts. 

But she knew her cousin: when Juliet set her mind on a thing, she did it, with or without the guidance of wiser heads. And perhaps Rosaline’s head was not much wiser—she must allow that she should have marched Juliet straight to her father, and let him forbid this mad plan—but at least she would not let Juliet loose alone.

Tybalt, brave in his new manhood, was too concerned with slipping the manservants and men-at-arms who usually accompanied him to notice two boys following him in the shadows, the taller holding the other back with a cautious hand.

* * *

To Juliet’s annoyance and Rosaline’s relief, Tybalt’s evening had been as dull as Nurse’s rambles in her cups.

“See? It is no more exciting to be a man than a woman,” Rosaline whispered, keeping her face tilted down so that her cap would shadow it. Juliet gazed around her with an unseemly openness. Rosaline saw little to look at. It was a dirty tavern full of dirty men, and the serving girls moved with a deft wariness that made something cold settle in the pit of her belly. “Let us go home now.”

A dagger slammed into a table with a thunk that silenced the room. “You will take back those words, you knave, or I shall feed them to you on the point of my sword!”

The voice was Tybalt’s; his dicing partner a sallow man-at-arms in Montague livery who only grinned and reached for his own blade in reply.

Rosaline’s heart leapt in her throat, her accustomed coolness transmuted to frozen panic.

And then Juliet screamed Tybalt’s name: high, piercing, unmistakably a woman’s scream. It cut through the tension in the tavern like scissors snipping a thread, and Tybalt whirled, disregarding his opponent—who, praise God, seemed just as surprised, frozen with his sword half-out of its sheath.

“Your pardon,” Tybalt said to the Montague, his voice tight. “My duty supplants my honor.”

The heat of his anger had been replaced with something colder, the darkness of his mien parting the crowd before him until he stood before the women. His eyes met Rosaline’s for a moment, and she gazed back; she was not afraid of Tybalt, no matter how he glowered. Then he grabbed Juliet’s wrist, hard enough that her flesh dimpled white under his fingers. “What, cousin Giulio, have you slipped from Nurse’s apron strings?” He raised his voice, the mockery in it ringing harsh. “I must beg pardon for my cousin, good my lords; his balls have not yet dropped, yet he is a little fool and thinks himself a man. We must get you home, cousin, lest your mother fret herself over your absence.”

Juliet was scarlet with humiliation as Tybalt dragged her outside, Rosaline following after, but they had not been found out, and Juliet at least had the sense to hold her tongue.

“Have you a single thought in your head?” Tybalt hissed once they were away from the warm light of the tavern. “That is no lord’s entertainment, nor even the kind of place where you might have been laughed at and sent home; had they found you out—” His voice cracked, as it still did sometimes, and he stopped in the middle of the street and pulled Juliet roughly to his chest, resting his chin atop her head. “God’s wounds, _Juliet_ , you little fool.”

His hands were trembling; he was frightened, Rosaline realized, and angry in his fear.

“I’m sorry,” Juliet sniffled. “I only wanted to see what you did. I didn’t think….”

“You did not think; no, that much is plain.” He patted her shoulder and took her hand, more gently this time. “And _you_.” He turned to Rosaline. “You are the sensible one of the two; why did you let her indulge in this madcap scheme?”

“Has good sense ever stayed Juliet from her course?”

To that Tybalt could make no answer but a grimace of acknowledgement, and they continued on, turning into the street that ran behind the garden at the back of the estate.

They slipped through the hedge without anyone seeing them.

“I have decided I do not wish to be a man,” Juliet announced, her good humor returned, thoughtfully twirling her cap around the fingers of her free hand. At Tybalt’s muffled scoff, she added to Rosaline, “But neither do I wish to be a nun, forever locked away from the world.” 

As she made a face, the cap slipped from her grasp, flying into a rosebush—but before she could reach for it Rosaline clasped her little cold hand, remembering the way little Juliet had clung to her when Camilla Montague handed her down from the apple tree. Juliet stilled, like a bird caught in the hand, too stunned for a moment by warmth to fly away.

“Then be a woman, sweet coz,” said Rosaline softly, “and I pray that it may please you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I probably should let the story stand for itself, but I ended up having less time to work on this than I had planned, so I can only hope it doesn't come off like I think Juliet is stupid or foolish, as I do not—merely brilliant, headstrong, and twelve, and trapped in a messed-up society—nor is Rosaline necessarily "right" herself.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] From love's sweet childish bow unharm'd](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4521528) by [croissantkatie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/croissantkatie/pseuds/croissantkatie)




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